“Something like that.” He turned to Kit. “I’m off to Sandra’s now.”
“Where else?” Kit said.
Daniel said, when he’d gone, “He doesn’t like me much, your brother.”
“Oh, he likes you all right. He thinks you’re a visually illiterate money-grubbing poseur, but he likes you. More coffee? Ginger nut?” Kit rattled the biscuit tin at him, aggressively. “Come on, don’t take it to heart. None of us likes any of us at the moment. Julian insists on taking Becky to school every day and fetching her back, because he’s decided there are kidnappers about.”
“Kidnappers? What, the mafia or something?” Daniel smiled. “After robbing Becky’s pencil case, are they?”
“Nobody can talk sense into him. Becky’s driven mad with it. She calls his car his “so-called car,” and says she’d rather he walked her to school in those reins they put on toddlers. She keeps on at Mum and Dad to call him off but they won’t. The more tantrums she throws, the more silent they go. We think, me and Robin, that they must have had a big row about something, but we can’t work it out, because they never have a row, never.”
“All couples do. Surely.”
“That’s what you read in magazines,” Kit said. “But my parents are the exception to the rule. My father is so bloody saintly it would make you sick, but the trouble is it’s real, it’s all real. My mother has bad tempers but they’re over in a minute. You can see her, you know, getting worked up—and then she has second thoughts, and then she’s saintly too.”
“Well—how can you live up to it?” Daniel said.
“Precisely. That is what I ask myself.”
“Is that why you’re so depressed?”
“Am I? I suppose I am.”
“You haven’t made any plans yet? About going away?”
“No.” She put down her coffee mug. “I’m getting like Julian,” she said.
“It would suit me if you stayed around,” Daniel said. “But you know that, Kit.”
He waited for some cross-patch response: I’m not here to suit you, am I? Instead she said, “Suppose—well, I’ve sent off for forms—suppose I went to Africa?”
“Like your parents?”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t go for a church group.”
“Too many strings attached?”
“Yes. And also I don’t believe in anything.”
“I see. You pretend, do you?”
She pushed her hair back, restless and bothered. “It doesn’t arise. I’d not like to hurt people.”
“You don’t feel you should stand up and be counted?”
“What—in the cause of atheism? Not much of a cause, is it? Better be a barn warden. It means more.”
“Yes, I see that. But you’d go as a volunteer, would you?”
“I could offer. They might not want me. I think they only want qualified people, engineers and well-diggers and so on. I could teach English, perhaps.”
“You’ve never mentioned this before.”
“No.” She looked at him balefully. “I don’t mention every thought in my head.”
“Have you talked to your parents?”
“I’ve talked to nobody, except you. Oh, and Robin, I did mention it to Robin, but he was practicing his forward defensive in front of the wardrobe mirror, and I don’t think he heard me.”
Daniel smiled, flicked a hand at his head. “He’s out of it, Robin.”
“Still, you can try your thoughts on him. Voice them. Feel them on the air. See if they sound too unreasonable before you present them to the rest of the human race.”
“To me it doesn’t seem unreasonable, though naturally I … from the purely selfish point of view … the thing is, why do you want to go?”
“Because I dream about it,” Kit said. “Most nights, now. Sorry if that sounds stupid. But there’s really no other reason I can give.”
He frowned. “Good or bad dreams?”
“Neither. They have atmosphere. They don’t have events. You know that kind?”
“Not really,” Daniel lied. “I seldom remember my dreams.”
“Oh, bloody men!” Kit said. “I think they’re a lower form of life. They exist in an eternal present, like dogs and cats.”
“Look, I think I ought to get on.” Daniel moved to the edge of his chair and began to do something with one of his flaps and buckles.
“Of course,” Kit said. “Don’t pause for ostentatious consultation of your Cartier. Good God, a woman may be
